BEWARE: DAVE'S ESL CAFE...Dave only has Dave's interests in mind, which is appeasing countries that pay him to advertise. He does NOT care about the suffering that teachers experience in some of these schools. He will delete truthful posts, which teachers have poured their heart and soul into writings about horrible schools. He could care less about them. What is the point of having a 'teacher's forum'?! Has anyone had similar experiences?

That is true! Recently the casualty of an internationalteachersplus.com(Canadian) recruitment campaign for KSA done through Dave's ESL Cafe. They practically 'urged' me to come to Saudi quickly and you know how costly it can be to come to this country. It is now 12 days and I am still waiting for a job. In my case, I have a base as I have worked here in the past. That worked against me though. I had too much confidence. But now I have a bit of leverage to be seen if I can force the local EFL recruiter to come up with a job for me. As Dave's ESL Cafe, in the past I always was 'lucky' I'd say. Following this event, I wrote to join his forum and make people aware about this situation that has been going on for a while. Casual and non-transparent recruitment campaign with Gulf countries, where you think you are matched to a job, but they only match you after you arrive. The local recruiters work with different clients. This inevitably causes some bottleneck and casualties. This is how these recruitment agencies work across continents and do business. We EFL teachers are just commodities to them.

And what is it to say that the situation in the EU or other places is any better? Most of the problems with EFL are that the majority of teachers are young travellers who are happy to 'hitchhike' so to speak. If you look at the adverts in many other countries you will often come across the word 'freelance' referring that you as an EFL teacher can be employed as a freelancer, which means they can give you as little or as much work as it pleases them and that there are little or hardly any contractual rights other than hours spent in the classroom in most cases. And, they practically force you to do the extra work which is 'required' (report-writing, marking, lesson prep, etc) for free!

I tried this, became anorexic and anemic, couldn't work and fell into a trap! excellent!! this why I have sought a forum to start an imminently important discussion. There is no survival guide out there or salvation NGO or what, to come and pull you out once you fall into any of these down-turning spirals. There are just you buddie teachers if you have any wherever you are. There are many EFL professional profiles on Linked In frozen in time for years of people that I never ever had any news about or come across in social circles. People say so and so still works at... but I know they haven't been there since 20xx. Supposedly, the last word was,, she went on a trip around the world... or what other story was out. The days are counted for all those agencies regardless of what we do. Simply because they cost too much for the client.

Well, on the brighter side, the thought that occurred to me is that if our future is a 'free-lancer' one then, we need to take more control over our work domain and the only way to do that is to diversify our skills. This covers for the fact that there is hardly going to be any future in any profession without any tech- or digital skills. So, I am going to start a discussion on 'mapping the future of survival in EFL' as I think that only by hearing from others out there can we realistically find our survival path and place in the 'digital free-lance' era.

BEWARE: DAVE'S ESL CAFE...Dave only has Dave's interests in mind, which is appeasing countries that pay him to advertise. He does NOT care about the suffering that teachers experience in some of these schools. He will delete truthful posts, which teachers have poured their heart and soul into writings about horrible schools. He could care less about them. What is the point of having a 'teacher's forum'?! Has anyone had similar experiences?

Oh yeah.

They have the most overzealous moderators of any forum - banning people forever for using swear words or saying anything negative about any teaching institution.

Beware seems a bit strong, perhaps wary is better word for the precautionary tales of traversing the TEFL world and its many teaching job from hell. In any event, Dave is a perfect example of what happens to us—all of us—as we get older but not necessarily wiser as human beings on planet earth in the early 21st century of the anno Domini era. What I'm writing about here is the simple brilliance and purity of Dave's idea was at the beginning, when he first got started, when his mind was freer and purer from the soul-sucking clutches of modern internet commerce. What he did was what about what any one of us would do if we ever came up with an idea as singularly cutting edge and ground breaking as his was. He sold out. He cashed-in his neoteric brand at the entrepreneurs' bank laughing all the way. In a word, he cleaned out the TEFL tank long before any other big sharks got there! And now that he's a shark, it no longer matters if he cares about any of the so-called teachers getting burned by the negative flames of his thriving enterprise. When you're at the top of the food chain, and your well-known first name flies as high and wide as your famous flagship brand, well, you're basically prone to forgetting about the little guys fighting for scraps at the bottom of the TEFL sea. Did he ever care about the mission statement? Probably. But Dave has grown up, and over the years he has grown increasingly more powerful in the business he and a handful of others got started. Like the new film Bigger, about two brothers who became publishing moguls and business titans of the muscle and fitness world, Dave and his elephantine ESL Cafe are just just too big for most of the badmouthing to bother him and more importantly, to ever bring his money-minting lounge down. Sure, we can complain about him. Yes, we can write posts about what a schmuck he is for allowing his business interests to hurt or harm some of the schmoes clamoring for a slice of his ESL pie. But it's just business, and we all know how the rest of the saying goes.